The invention is related to warranty determination for electronic devices. More specifically, the invention relates to creating and displaying a service ID, which encodes a warranty start date.
Since the early 1980""s, personal electronic devices such as desktop personal computers, portable computers, personal data assistants, printers, and fax machines, to name a few, have become common place and are now used daily by many people. Although these devices are generally very reliable, sometimes they fail to operate correctly and need to be serviced or repaired. Because these devices are very complex, it is often very difficult to troubleshoot, debug, and repair the exact component failure. Therefore, most of these electronic devices are repaired using board or unit replacement of several of the components. This type of repair when the product is out of warranty, although predictable, can be expensive to a consumer. If the customer insists that a defective product is still under warranty but is unable to show physical proof, many manufacturers will usually absorb the cost of the repair to keep customers satisfied. Other companies will resort to a database of warranty cards and/or manufacturing dates. However, even resorting to databases of warranty cards and/or manufacturing dates presents problems. Often times, the databases have proven to be up to 50% inaccurate due to several factors. Further, because of varying inventory shelf times for different types of selling channels, it is difficult to use the manufacturing date of the product as an estimate of the purchase date.
Often times, electronic devices, such as portable computers, are distributed to users within a corporation from a common pool. Therefore, when a product fails it is often difficult to determine when the warranty period actually began. Therefore, there is also a need to allow customers of electronic devices to determine the start of the warranty period to decide whether a defective unit should be sent to the manufacturer for repair/service or exchanged with another unit from the common pool.
Repairing xe2x80x98out-of-warrantyxe2x80x99 electronic devices increases the warranty costs associated with a product and thus affects the profitability of manufacturers. Up to 20% of some systems are returned for repair outside of their warranty period and are accepted at no cost to the customer because there is no accurate way to determine when the electronic device was placed in service. Thus, there is an incentive for manufacturers to accurately determine when a warranty period for a product begins. By eliminating the inability to determine when an electronic device is out of warranty, the cost of warranty repairs will decrease allowing for larger profits or lower cost products.
An electronic device has a central processing unit (CPU), a display, and a memory device. The display and memory device are both coupled to the CPU. The memory device includes a data structure having a born-on-date (BOD) field and a counter field. The BOD field contains a warranty start date for the electronic device. The CPU is capable of displaying the BOD field on the display. The BOD field is updated by said CPU based on the contents of said counter field.